Summing up the case for his client's insanity, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's defense lawyer Gerald Boyle painted a chilling picture with his words. "Skulls in a locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbatingāThis is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness" (Bardsley 2005).
The bald fact is nobody can adequately account for the depraved behavior of a Jeffrey Dahmer, although there are never a shortage of theories, or attempts to explain the inexplicable. In general the causes of crime can be lumped into a few general categories, such as biological, economic, political, psychological, and sociological. But the lines between these theories blur in practice, and there is no way to isolate a single factor from the others, let alone prove that it was responsible. All we know is that nearly all the horrible acts that Dahmer perpetrated have been recorded throughout history among the world's cultures, and even considered normal behavior in some.
Biological causes include the assumption of genetic predispositions for criminal behavior. The fact that some progress has been made on finding the possible biological basis for the symptoms of some mental disorders such as depression, manic-depression, and schizophrenia is promising. Studies have hinted that the propensity for s
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